The Book of Olivia Page 2

  * * *

  Four months before…

  “Incoming!” A bolt hit the ground near the trench where I took cover. Sod and rocks flew everywhere, forced up from the impact, turning red like hot coals then black, and finally to ash, floating away before the debris could rain down. Waves of heat rolled across the clearing, warping the air. Typical Aeropite attack. Tidy.

  Our tactics were not so clean.

  Rebels scrambled for cover, dodging blasts from every direction, some running for the orchard, a viable food source the enemy didn’t want to destroy, only pillage. Others didn’t make it, instead turning the same cherry red and disintegrating into ash before my eyes.

  “Run. It’s an extermination squad.” A young clone of perhaps eighteen flew past me, jumping over the trench, clearing it easily, continuing on into the forest behind me. I knew whose forces had come to pay us a visit. The clone soldier might’ve retreated, but I had no intention of going anywhere. Marcus’s damn troops weren’t raiding this field or orchard. They couldn’t have it. No amount of fear could chase me away. Not this time.

  Everywhere around me, chaos ensued, but I remained calm, focused, waiting for our enemy to land, so I could get a clear shot at one of them. As the ships stopped swooping over us, and began to hover above the field, I lifted my crossbow, tipped my head, and squinted through the iron site. Our weapons might be low tech, leaving behind bodies to pick up, but they got the job done. As I said, not so clean.

  Grabbing a handful of grass, I let it fall to the ground, watching the wind direction and how far it floated from my location, using the angle where it landed in conjunction to my body to calculate the windage correction. A year ago, I would have laughed at what I did, how being a killer had become second nature. Now, it didn’t seem funny. I adjusted my sites and inhaled, slipping my finger over the trigger. One, one thousand. Two, one…

  The composite material on the tip of my arrow would blow at impact. We didn’t have to have our enemies’ fancy weapons to wreck destruction. Basic chemistry and a little ingenuity was all we needed, and we’d proven to be a formable opponent. Before the revolution, I wouldn’t have known how to make gunpowder from piss and straw. Now, I could call myself an expert, thanks to Axel and his mind-blowing ability to retain everything he read.

  A man rolled into the trench, landing on his feet beside me. Speak of the devil. I didn’t have to take my eyes off the ships to know who had joined me. Electrical jolts chased through my blood every time he came near, as intense as the first day we’d met.

  “Hi,” I said without glancing in his direction.

  “We need to pull back.” Axel had a way of being blunt. If he wanted something, he didn’t hold out. Sometimes it came off as charming; more often than not, his direct approach infuriated me. The new Olivia, the dictator’s rebel daughter, didn’t take to getting bossed around.

  I knew what we needed to do, but I didn’t always want to do it. Sometimes, sticking your ground and fighting proved to be the only option. If we kept giving up territory, we’d eventually run out of places to go—and food. “Negative. They’re not getting these crops.”

  I’d busted my ass to bring the old orchards to fruit, and I’d be damned if I lost this one. They’d already raided us three times this month, and we could not afford any more before the rainy season. The enemy wanted to starve the resistance right out of us, and they were close to meeting their goal.

  The camouflage nets over the fields and trees were no longer working. The enemy had begun to search for concentrated thermo patterns, the body heat of the workers in the fields. They’d let us do all the work, and, when time to harvest came, they arrived like locusts, so numerous we were quickly overwhelmed.

  We needed some technology on our side, and an EM dome shield would do the trick. Not only couldn’t the ships fly over, through, or near it, but, by bending the electromagnetic waves, we could make our crops invisible to their thermo scanners as well as the naked eye. My father had used the very same technology to hide impoverished neighborhoods, so he didn’t have to look at them. Still there. Still lacking. But out of sight—out of mind. Not only the clones had suffered during my father’s regime.

  The EM dome would wreak havoc with their electronics, giving us an edge where we had none before. Why not use the very evil keeping the Aeropian people down, to help them rise above adversity? Until we had a shield in place, we needed to hold what few food plots remained, including those we’d started before the revolution. I wasn’t about to back down.

  Axel studied me for a couple of moments before responding. He chose his next words carefully, knowing I could be resistant if pushed. “We have others.”

  “And they don’t? Why this orchard? They’ve already captured half a dozen other plots. They don’t need this one.” I squinted as the ships began to land. “I’m not letting them have any more. Why are you here? I have things under control.”

  “Control. Is that what you call this? We’re about to be overrun. My second said you wouldn’t listen. Planned to fight this one out? Stop being stubborn, Olivia.”

  “Not stubborn—realistic.”

  “There are too many. You know this.”

  As I said, blunt. “They’re like strays. You keep feeding them, and they will continue to come back.” I waited for the hatches to open, refusing to move from my spot. “We have to get the shields up.”

  “First, we have to get the parts and tap into their power grid. How do you plan to do that from here?”

  “I’m three-quarters of the way there. I need one piece to finish the device, and then we can sneak into the city and recalibrate their towers. Until then, we make a stand.” I aimed through the sites. “Here.”

  “Olivia.” The tone of his voice rode the air like the quiet before a storm. It held a charge and moved through my body with force impossible to resist. I hated the way he said my name when he tried to reason with me. I had no strength to resist it. I exhaled, knowing I’d cave. I always caved.

  Axel rested his hand on my shoulder and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “The crops won’t do us any good if we’re dead.”

  I lowered my weapon, turning to him. “I worked so hard for this.” Anger. Disappointment. I knew what he’d said to be true. Live to fight another day. Right. Still, pissed me off. We did all the work, they reaped the rewards. We needed to draw the line somewhere, and here looked as good a time and spot as any.

  “It’s not worth your life. Let it go.” A smile crept onto his face. “I booby-trapped the orchard with some of their mines, anyway. All they’ll get is pulp and wounded. Let’s go. The rest are waiting for us.”

  I sighed. “Fine. If I ever come face-to-face with Marcus Axis, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. This orchard belongs to us.”

  “Duly noted. You can read him the riot act. Another day. Come on.” I appreciated Axel didn’t force me. If he’d tried, I would have dug my heels in and probably paid with my life, as he’d forecasted. Axel grabbed my hand, and together we ran through the trench to a clear spot to evacuate.

  I threw my crossbow up on the bank and reached for purchase. A thick tree root provided the perfect handhold. I pulled my body over the edge and rolled to give him space to hop out next to me.

  Boom! I jerked my face toward the explosion and the smoke in the air. The mines were old school, messy, and we’d harvested them from the border. They’d replace them in a couple of weeks, and we’d steal them again, after our spies watched, mapped where they were, and extracted them. A dangerous task whose benefits far outweighed the consequences.

  Axel grinned at me. “Orange juice.”

  I gave him a fist bump, and we scrambled to our feet, running for the cover of the forest, where the ships couldn’t go and the soldiers didn’t follow. Only traps and death waited for them in there. They’d lost enough troops to know better than to pursue us into the swamp. In there, we were kings of the jungle.

  I glanced back one last time to see the remaining
ships land and soldiers gather around the orchard, perhaps wondering if the casualties would be worth navigating the mine field to get to the fruit. I could tell them it wouldn’t. Axel did great work.

  Someday, I’d have my chance to confront the leader of the Aeropites, right before I pulled the trigger and killed him. Aeropia belonged to me, and I’d be damned if I let Marcus Axis keep it. Husband or not, the contract I’d been forced to ratify didn’t give him the right to sit in my seat and steal from the free people of Aeropia. I’d long before decided since I’d gotten us into this mess, I’d be the one to get us out, and I wouldn’t do it from the sidelines.

  * * *

  It was funny how certain memories stuck with us more than others. I could remember so clearly, though only five at the time, a map hanging on the wall of my father’s study inside the summer palace to the north. Thick parchment, or perhaps papyrus, the fibers ran multiple directions as only handmade paper did. The colors were washed on with earthen pigments and ink, giving it the appearance of a page from an illuminated book.

  Even though someone had painted it centuries before we had ships in the skies, using advanced technology, the coastlines mirrored modern charts. The shores were so accurate, one could lay the photos taken from a satellite in space over the ancient image and the lines would match.

  The map was beautiful. I spent hours studying it, climbing on a chair, absorbing the details and colors through the thick ultraviolet-protection-coated glass. Each brushstroke, line, and curve remained etched in my memories. The artist illustrated the map with a flat globe, as though man could sail off the edge of the world if he wandered too far into the unknown.

  Gold and silver leaf accentuated the work, which showed schooners, warships, galleons, and naked tribal men I used to giggle at when I saw their male bits. But I remembered the red water serpent in the middle of a blue expanse the most. Its tail coiled around a ship, crushing the bow, where men fell to their deaths in the sea. Below this fearsome creature, in elegant script, were the words, HC SVNT DRACONES.

  “What does that say, Daddy?” Nobody spoke Latin anymore, except priests, or scholars who wanted to impress their dates. I barely knew English, but my father… well, he’d liked to impress his dates as a young college student.

  He touched the glass and turned to me. “Here there be monsters.”

  Later I found out it meant, here there be dragons, but the meaning remained the same. Evil existed. It lurked among us, waiting to pounce, and even our ancestors believed in it. As I studied my reflection in my cup of water, I wondered if I’d ever be the girl I’d left behind when my city burned, innocent of the real world and what had waited for me out there.

  No. I’d been forever changed. Here there be monsters. I gently touched my face, waiting for some snide remark from the other side of the wall, but it didn’t come. Pilot remained silent. So I closed my eyes and drifted off to another time and place.

  When I looked at modern maps, there were many areas marked as the unknown. The mysteries of the older atlases always drew me, as they did now. After the war, many sectors of our planet were abandoned, and few knew what existed in those outlying areas anymore. I’d been told, wild animals and people who ate their own. We hadn’t had contact with them for over one hundred fifty years. For all I knew, the stories were true.

  Or fiction.

  The damage from the missiles was so extensive during the Great War, I once doubted anything could survive where the bombs hit the hardest. Since living in a survival situation, where every breath became a gift, I’d changed my way of thinking. Our planet had begun to heal. Anything was possible.

  Our Teslan towers did not reach into those lands, so our ships did not fly there. The communications between continents and outlying territories were fractured long before the war, and the links no longer existed. My father always talked of extending his power net to explore the battle-damaged wilds on the other side of the Rocky Mountains and across the oceans, to a place called Sententia. In our country’s better days, the island chain belonged to us. He’d claimed it had been paradise and believed it still could be. Nobody really knew. The residents of the islands shut down all contact with the outside right before the war.

  Once we built bigger towers, and their twins on the land across the seas, we could fly over the expanse, discover what waited for us there. Much as we did in centuries past.

  It could be the reason he’d kept the old maps. Perhaps they reminded him more existed beyond our borders. To discover what waited there, we would have to expand beyond what we knew, reach out to forgotten lands and peoples.

  With the clones’ primitive blue chips removed—well, most of them—we no longer had a way to tell friend from foe. Many of our numbers had faded into the population in the cities in the first few months, hiding among an enemy who possessed better weapons, ships, and technology. People they had risen up against, but in the end were too afraid to face in battle. Many of our rebels deserted to the other side, even when they didn’t agree with the enemy’s goals.

  So, we redesigned the chips, once a symbol of slavery, into a means to track and identify our own. They were finer, more delicate, and more permanent than any the keepers gave their clones before, and resembled a tattoo more than a small square i-dent. We could only remove them surgically by cutting into the face, a painful deterrent. After accepting them, we could never go back. We’d always be in exile—from both sides, who knew what we wore before.

  A meeting of the leaders of the clans was called, and their people were offered two options. Join us or die. Most of the cowards had already fled our ranks. Those who remained behind willingly joined our cause, taking up the banner of freedom, wearing it as a badge inside their flesh. Each chip bore a unique symbol of the cause, as personal as a name. Some had even become known by what they wore, and clans had unique designs incorporated into the now-red pattern that glowed softly like an ember in a fire, instead of pulsing like a beacon for all to see. The mark helped us tell where other rebels hailed from at a glance.

  It became to us what a medal or a tab was to a soldier.

  Though I had a serpent, like the one on the map in my father’s study, the city dwellers called me the Iron Bee. This was because the codes were found written upon a piece of my signed graphite drawing. It had been tucked away in Eva’s pocket, where they’d found it after she jumped from the tower. There was no doubt among the Aeropites who freed the clones. Between my story loaded onto a holo-chip covered in my blood and the proof of my treason found on a corpse, I was the most-wanted woman on the planet, and one of the most hated.

  It was proper Aeropite tradition to name your daughters and sons after the president’s firstborn. When it was discovered what I had done, women flocked to the recorder’s office to change their names. Olivia had been stricken from the books, erased from birth certificates, marriage licenses, records of death, and, the final insult, scratched from the surface of tombs and headstones. I was but one now. Like a modern day Jezebel, nobody desired to be linked to me.

  Perhaps, in time, my people would forgive me, but I did not count on it. I had created a rift, and if we were to survive, I must find a way to stitch our empire back together—a task that grew more insurmountable with every passing day. I could only imagine what plans they had for me, should I be caught, but I didn’t fear that. I feared the demise of Aeropia and its people should I fail.

  If I had learned anything in my fight to survive, it was this. There was no such thing as coincidence. Everything happened for a reason. Axel and I met and both survived because it would lay the paving on the road ahead, allowed me to know a people society chose to ignore, a people who could save us again as they had in the past.

  Though I had told some of my story, I was not finished. When I turned back to watch my city burn the night of the uprising, I knew there would be more to my tale.

  We wanted to refurbish old ships, go to a new land, harvest and scavenge anything that could aid us in our goal to rec
laim and rebuild Aeropia. Across the mountains and seas sat a second chance. I didn’t believe the stories of cannibals and wild beasts. I couldn’t indulge in the tales. There had to be a sanctuary, stable ground. Something we could call home if I failed to reclaim my birthright. We needed a place to regroup and rally an army where our scientists could develop technologies we would have to possess to win the coming battles. For, once our enemy found out we migrated, their land lust would guarantee they’d follow.

  A matter of months after the uprising, my husband’s military forces drove us from the cities, after which the Aeropites reinforced existing walls around their domain, claiming fields and small towns, sealing us out and themselves in.

  My father had believed in control. He’d relinquished very little of it. Part of his obsessive need to micromanage filtered down to give him the sole trigger to the clones’ security girdles. This obsession ultimately ended his life and almost destroyed Aeropia. The walls were just another hallmark of my father’s regime. He tried to hold what didn’t belong to him—through his marriage to my mother and by force, or whatever means he felt necessary to employ, starvation, public executions.

  His tactics would not work. The only way to hold my people together was to regain their trust and respect and unite them with the people they once saw as nothing more than disposable. But how I’d do it, I didn’t have a clue.

  If we wanted to get into the cities, we could, but only death waited there for us. What we wanted within those walls was too heavily guarded to risk an assault with our small numbers. We would have to force a temporary evacuation if we wanted to recalibrate the towers.

  I had been a fool to believe freedom could be the answer to all our woes, and with it we could find peace. I had since discovered you couldn’t have both. To maintain freedom, one must fight. It was never handed to you, only earned. You could pray for peace, but you damned well better prepare for war. I’d learned this lesson the hard way and wouldn’t soon forget.